The Way We Never Met: Champagne High
by Athenae1
Summary: Third in a series of things that never happened to Mal. How he learned to dance. MalKaylee.


The Way We Never Met: Champagne High

Author: Athenae

Summary: Thid in a series of five things that never happened to Mal. The story of how he came to dance with Kaylee.

Rating: PG, for sarcastic Chinese cussing and some hints of Mal/Kaylee.

Disclaimer: Joss created Firefly and Fox owns it. I just play with it a little then put it back. No infringement intended.

Author's note: The lyrics in this and later stories are all from Matthew Ryan, but the title is Sister Hazel's.

_We were two of a kind, but you were the pretty one_

_You put your heart in mine, and now it's all I ever want_

He was doing this all wrong.

Should be winin' and dinin' her under the stars on some terrace somewhere, with fancy food like Inara's dates eat. Should be sitting at the opera, trying not to fall asleep by counting hats in the audience.

Should be trying to get her to fall in love with him, leave that raggedy old husband of hers for his youthful and roguish self, working the space pirate angle, certainly more exciting than some muck who sits in an office all day, even if the muck can afford to put diamonds on her fingers.

Instead, she's on her back, and he's standing over her, his hands full of white satin and lace.

"Hold up the train," she called out, voice muffled from the wrench she had clutched in her teeth. "Aloysius will kill me if this dress gets dirty. He's always telling me slaves ain't got — sorry, don't have — all day to be making my clothes, you know. He has a company to run."

Makin' matters worse, Wash stood in the doorway, lookin' at him with a raised eyebrow that accuses him of being several kinds of bastards all at once. He flushed.

"What?" Mal hissed. "She wanted to … We got to talkin' and I mentioned our little problem and … apparently she grew up knowing how to … gorram it, Wash, stop lookin' at me like that."

Which only made the eyebrow go up higher.

"There!" she said, pulling herself out from under Serenity's engine. She stood up and brushed dust off her gown, and took back the fabric from Mal's hands. "Thanks for holding that for me." Then, noticing Wash, "Who are you?"

Wash's eyebrow was now in danger of disappearing under his hair. "I was about to ask you the same thing, young lady."

She smiled and held out her hand. "I'm Kaywinnit," she said. "And you had a seriously damaged power coupling in the fourth combustion chamber of your secondary grav boot, but it's fixed now."

Wash took her hand, his eyes on Mal's face. "Well," the pilot said, bending over her hand and brushing it with his lips. "It's lovely to meet you."

Mal met Wash's gaze over her head and rolled his eyes. This night started out so normal.

Such a simple task. Find them some work. Lots of rich industrialists here on Persephone, maybe somebody needed something hauled somewhere. And with Bester laid up in medbay with his fourth case of the clap this month and the grav boot shot, they certainly weren't going anywhere tonight.

When Inara mentioned a party she'd passed on, Mal practically tore the invitation from her fingers. His best suit was buried all the way back in his closet, and it had seen a few too many ports of call, but it would do. He was just there to make contacts.

But the laugh that bubbled up over the clinking of glasses and the murmur of the crowd stopped him dead, halfway across the room to approach a thin-faced young man who'd been waving his money about at the bar earlier. It was a full-on, joyful, little-girl laugh, and looking around at these tight-cinched princesses, Mal couldn't imagine it came from one of them.

She was dancing on the arm of a gray-haired gentleman, spinning and twirling, some complicated steps that made her stiff white ruffled dress swirl around her as they turned. Her hair was red-gold, all piled up on top of her head with sparkling bits of something in it.

He couldn't look away.

Two glasses of shimmerwine and he was ready to approach her, as she stood, flushed and slightly out of breath, next to a buffet table piled with fruit and flowers.

He held out a hand, saw the disgusted way she glanced at it, bowed, then straightened back up when she frowned. Gorram it, he was doing this all wrong. Such a little thing she was, makin' a teenager out of him.

"Malcolm Reynolds," he managed, undone by the way her eyes raked him up and down, seeing, he was certain, the scuffs on his shoes and the frayed ends of his trousers. If only he'd given into Wash's teasing and bought some new finery for this shindig.

"Kaywinnit Jung," she answered, her voice as haughty as Inara's, as some Core-planet princess's, which, he supposed, she had rights to, bein' pretty as a princess too.

"I was wondering, Miss Jung, if your father" he tilted his head toward the gray-haired, red-shashed man whose protective hand rested on her back "would grant me the favor of a dance with your graceful self."

Her mouth dropped open and cold dread washed over him. Gorram, what had he said wrong now?

"Allow me to introduce you, Mr. Reynolds," she said, the corners of her innocent lips tugging upwards. "Lord Aloysius Redmond Jung III.

"My husband."

He couldn't imagine for the life of him what Jayne would say if the mercenary could see him now.

Her fingers gripped his collar, whether because that was the way this dance was done or because she was holding on for dear life, he couldn't tell.

"Ouch!" she hissed as he stepped on her fine shoes, hearing the sparkly leather crunch under his clumsy feet. "Oh, you're dreadful!"

He pulled back and looked at her face, but she looked more pitying than angry. "Didn't anyone ever teach you how to dance?"

"No, missus," he snapped, lifting her slightly and swinging her around him, half a second behind the other couples on the hard and shiny floor. "But I can shear a sheep like you've never seen, and I can birth a calf, and that was a little more useful than tripping over fancy steps where I come from."

She stopped dancing so suddenly he tripped over her ankle. Boy, he'd done it now. Any second she'd be calling out for her husband to have him shot.

But she just laughed, and moved them off to the side of the dance floor, where they could sway and twirl and not injure anyone other than themselves. That laugh. If it came bottled or boxed, he'd pay in platinum for it, that's for certain.

"Where did you come from?" she asked. "With the sheep-shearin' and all?"

"Place called Shadow." He breathed her rosy perfume in. She was tiny, barely came up to his head, but her arms were good and strong and she stood nice and steady beside him. Not one of these delicate little things. "Mother had a ranch there, before the war. What about you, Mrs. Jung? How did a healthy girl like yourself wind up ... um ... what I mean to say is ..."

"Why do I have the face of some prairie harpy but I'm trussed up like a Councilor and why am I married to a man three times my age?" She smirked.

He felt himself flush again. How to get out of this conversation without a bullet wound, that was his main concern now. "Well, actually, um ..."

"Family's lived on Persephone for six generations. We have a little machine shop outside of town. My dad -- my father runs it. Fixes things up, ships and such, and I paid attention. Didn't have any brothers, so all his knowledge went into me.

"One day, this nice man comes into the shop. Mechanic's fluffed off to wherever, can't find him, and the man has to get home for his son's wedding. He's frantic. My father wasn't around.

"So I fixed his ship up for him. Couldn't tell you how I did it. Couldn't tell him either, but after four hours of trying to explain it, he'd kind of fallen in love with me." The secret smile on her face made Mal's knees weak.

"I'm twenty-six. He's fifty-seven. He's really nice to me."

"He tries to be, anyway," said a deep, balanced voice from behind them. Jung came up behind his wife and pressed a kiss to her temple. "I saw you dancing, Kaywinnit, but then you disappeared. I was afraid you'd deserted me for this young man here."

"Never, darling," she said, her own voice smoothing, lowering an octave, the giggly schoolgirl gone in an instant. Mal felt like he'd been watching a picture that tilted, revealing a whole new image hidden beneath the first. "Mr. Reynolds here was just asking about the nature of our unusual union."

She winked at him. Tricky little thing. Well, he could play along. "Mrs. Jung was explaining how you met, sir, and I was about to ask her what you did for a living. Perhaps you could tell me yourself."

Jung slipped an arm around her waist, possessive, proud. "I run a textile firm on Osiris, despite my wife's best attempts to sabotage it by keeping all the finest fabrics for her own frocks. And yourself, Mr. Reynolds?"

Perhaps this night wouldn't be a total loss after all. "I'm captain of a ship called Serenity, sir. Cargo transport, mostly."

"What brings you here tonight?" Jung motioned for three glasses of straw-colored liquor and handed one to Mal.

"Stranded here for a while, matter of fact." He stifled a swell of frustration at Bester and his fondness for whores. "Our secondary grav boot's shot, and until I can find a mechanic to take care of it, well, I'm stuck here. Thought I'd come by the party and see if we could pick up some business." He looked up at Jung. "When the ship's whole, sir, ain't nothin' faster in the 'verse, if you're looking to get something somewhere quick."

Jung nodded, said something about shipping lines and the trouble with customs duties that made Mal's mouth water, but his wife looked up like she hadn't even heard the implied offer.

"Did you say secondary grav boot?"

Mal nodded, and her eyes lit up.

"What's the matter with it?"

Her voice, muffled, sounded out from inside his bathroom. "That was just like what got screwed up with my husband's ship. Don't know what they're doing these days, routing the power through the fourth chamber instead of the third, because all it does is give you juice for the first year and then conk out on you, usually when you need it most. Do you have any towels?"

He handed her the cleanest one he could find and she emerged, drying her hands, a few strands of that red-gold hair slipping out of her tight-wrapped concoction. "This is a shiny ship, Mr. Captain Reynolds."

"Thank you." His chest swelled with pride. Not many people could see past her rust and her outdated instrumentation. Certainly not many people of her society set, that's for sure.

"Used to dream myself to sleep thinking about flying away on one of the ships that touch down on Persephone," she said, handing the towel back to him. "Used to dream I'd get picked up by some crew needed a good mechanic and didn't care so much about where I came from. Never once dreamed I'd get picked up by a billionaire who could buy me ten ships if he wanted."

What could he say to that? He couldn't buy one of her shoes. "Seems to have worked out nice for you."

"Sorry you were stranded," she said then, looking straight at him, so guileless he felt bad about his selfish thoughts. "Had to get that grav boot addressed, though. Now, you could have relied on the primary, but it would only pull you down so far. You try to set down on some moon too far away from a grav generator, next thing you know you're flying back upward again, smoke pourin' out everywhere, alarms goin' off, and then you're well and truly done for."

"So our useless mechanic said, right before he retired to medbay for the rest of the afternoon."

The laugh again. Her teeth flashed in the low light of his bunk. "What's wrong with him?"

How to explain this to a high-class girl such as herself? "Bester has a ... well, a likin' for sex," he said awkwardly. "And sometimes he's not too particular about who he takes to his bed."

The bed between them taking up entirely too much of his mind now, especially when she hid a giggle behind her hand, eyes sparkling like her big glittery rings. Last thing he needed to do, seducing the wife of some rich Osiris fabric baron, lovely as his young wife's ankles might be.

"I should be getting you back to that party, Mrs. Jung." The words came out sticky. He hadn't wanted to say them. He liked her, this funny little thing flitting around his ship in her fine dress, her manicured hands so clever in his ship's belly. He wanted to offer her that old dream, the one about running off on impulse with a band of low-class nobodies, but the sight of the diamond and emerald brooch holding her floral corsage on stopped him before he could open his mouth.

She held out her hand, then huffed impatiently and crooked his arm for him so she could tuck hers through it. "You should call me Kaylee," she said quickly, softly, as they walked down the cargo bay and out the door into the warm Persephone night. "It's what my father calls me."

The walk back wasn't long, but Mal made sure they took their sweet time, savoring every time the wind blew a strand of her soft hair against his face. The paper lanterns up the main path were lit, and fireflies buzzed around them, glowing.

When they got close enough to hear the music from the party she stopped. "I think I can get back on my own from here, and now that your ship is repaired I imagine you're anxious to leave."

There was that slip back into society princess speech again, like it was a coat she put on. He wondered how long she'd had to practice that after she got married and move to Osiris, how much time she spent correcting her common beginnings for the benefit of her wealthy husband. He wondered how long it had taken before the very things Aloyisius Jung had loved about her -- her free spirit, her practical ways -- became a liability at his dinner parties, at dances like this.

He cursed himself. Damn you, Mal Reynolds, you don't know a gorram thing about her life or her marriage. Don't be makin' up reasons in your head to rescue her. She's rich as ten Inaras could be, she don't need rescuin'.

"I don't know if there's anything I can do to adequately thank you for fixing my ship." Well, that didn't sound stiff. Not at all. "May I pay you for your services?"

This time she was the one who flushed, to the roots of her pretty red hair. "Oh, no, I could never take your money," she said, taking his hands instead. "I'm just happy that Aloysius-- that you needed me to fix you up. I miss doing things like that."

He couldn't help himself. "I 'magine you don't get much opportunity to do that anymore."

"No," she said, looking sad, an expression almost comical on a face so bright. "I tinker, now and then, but there are more than 1,200 people who work for my husband and they're always eager to help us with whatever we need."

A doll in a glass case, he thought, and when she leaned up to kiss his cheek, he knew she'd read the words in his eyes.

"There's something I'd like to do for you, though," she said, teasing creeping back into her expression.

He stepped back and bowed low, a parody of his earlier rich-man act that had so offended her. "I am at your service, m'lady."

Still holding his hands, she stepped closer. "I'm going to teach you to dance."

Inside the rich dance hall, the band struck up an old, old country waltz,and Mal, surprised, found he knew the song.

"Forward, then back. Left, then right," she instructed, placing his hands on her waist and hers on his shoulders. The warmth of her seeped through his jacket's tough fabric; if he never saw her again, he thought, he'd live on this night for months.

"Now forward again, now back. There. You've got it."


End file.
